Are the Wheels Coming Off? Part 2

Obama may yet squeak to re-election, but it is clear the magic is gone. As I predicted last week, the media are starting to turn on him. Right now it is mostly showing up on the editorial pages in the ranks of unsigned endorsement editorials. Papers that endorsed Obama enthusiastically in 2008, like the Orlando Sentinel, are coming out for Romney. As usual, the foreign press speaks more candidly. The editor’s note from this week’s (London) Spectator spells it out:

Superman is hurtling to earth. Harold Evans says that liberal Americans worry that President Obama is losing his grip. Obama may have edged the second debate; but he’s still struggling to better one of the most boring challengers ever produced by American politics. Meanwhile, Douglas Murray says that even if Obama wins the White House he’ll never fully recover.

When you’ve lost Harold Evans. . .

But the most head-turning Romney endorsement has to be from the New York Observer, which is nothing if not in touch with the pulse of trendy Manhattan. (This is the paper that, after all, had the egregious Joe Conason as a featured columnist.)

Four years ago, Barack Obama captured the imagination of many Americans with his thrilling message of change. Given the challenges confronting the president—two raging wars and an unprecedented global economic collapse—the desire for a quick fix was unrealistic.

America supported that candidate (as did this newspaper), but his presidency, so filled with promise and potential, has failed to deliver the change America needs.

When you’ve lost the New York Observer. . .

Lastly (for now), I noted yesterday some evidence that Romney may be doing well with some segments of the Jewish vote. Well, the Chicago Jewish Star has endorsed Romney:

Finally we like Mr. Romney in comparison to his opponent. The administration of Barack Obama has been a failure. . .

Contrary to the implications of Mr. Obama’s 2008 statement, Americans provided for the sick before his time; the rise of the oceans did not begin “to slow” and our planet did not begin “to heal”- not in a metaphoric sense and not in a real one. . .

Mr. Obama’s unsatisfactory direction for America was rooted in untenable assumptions, fueled by arrogance, and promoted by divisiveness. We don’t need more of that.

It is not only that Mr. Obama thus deserves to be a one-term proposition; it is that Mr. Romney is simply the better bet for our country.